He didn't want to do this. He wasn't good at doing this. Why was he even doing this?
Shuuseki glanced at the bouquet in his hands. He'd chosen orange orchids for this occasion. He almost added a few more flowers and colors, but then thought that it would have been too colorful. So now he was stuck with plain, bland, orange.
This was silly. This was a waste of time. This was weak. He should turn around right now and go back to the life he left behind when he came here.
He didn't.
Shuuseki lowered himself onto the grassy ground, careful to sit down and not fall down. When was the last time he actually sat on the ground? Chairs were for the sophisticated. The filthy ground was for simpletons and slobs who didn't care about ruining thousand dollar suits. Then again, she always could make him do things he wouldn't have otherwise done. Like right now, as Shuuseki hadn't visited the family graves since moving away. He only did it now for her.
"It's been a long time, love," he whispered, the words awkwardly strung together as they rolled off his tongue. He hadn't called someone love after she died. It felt strange, saying it now, even if he was talking to her. Or about her, really. You couldn't talk to someone who wasn't there. (And no, her gravestone didn't count as her.)
He placed the bouquet of orchids at the base of the gravestone, his mouth twisting into a grim smile. "You were always so obsessed with flowers. I never understood why; they died within weeks and were a complete waste of money. Money we had plenty of, but…" He sighed. "Money was never an object to you. Price didn't matter if you were buying something for someone you cared for. I just wish I had learned that before I gave you my credit card."
Laughter overtook him for a moment as he recalled one of the many times his wife had run up a bill on one of their cards. She'd always smile at him so innocently and try her best to put Shuuseki in a good mood before breaking the news to him. "But I had a good reason for buying it!" she'd say. And he'd never get mad at her. Or, rather, he'd never stay mad at her for much more than a few minutes. He just… couldn't.
Maybe that's why we worked out, he thought. She was too brilliant and kind for me to be angry with her. Any actions she made had a reason behind it; like buying all of those flowers, so Chaud would never see them die. She didn't want him to know death.
"It was foolish of you," Shuuseki muttered, his face returning to its usual mask of stoicism, any traces of laughter disappearing from his features. "Chaud was young, but he wasn't stupid. Not like you thought he was. He knew death existed. We lived near my family's graveyard! You couldn't have hidden it from him forever." His expression quickly turned to a pained one and he absently clutched at his chest. "Not with you sick—sick from giving birth to him. The birth of our son was to be a good thing, but… But the doctors never told us just how bad the complications would be."
His last words came out as a whisper. Tension welled up in his chest, forcing him to take a moment and breathe. This was not him. He was not the type to cry over the dead. People died every day; what did it matter that one of those people was his wife? It didn't. The business world was not a world where smiles and tears belonged. Shuuseki may never forget the pain of losing a wife, just as his son would never forget the pain of losing a mother, but he would never allow himself to succumb to petty emotions such as sadness and regret. He refused.
After clearing his throat a few times and wiping away what were most definitely not tears in the making, there was just something in his eye, Shuuseki decided to continue. The next topic of his one-sided conversation: Chaud.
"Chaud is well. He is fifteen now; his sixteenth birthday is in two months. We will have dinner with our executives and their children that night, but he won't have the day off. He does fairly well as the Vice President of BlazeQuest. He's suited for the job—I've made sure of that—but he's been distracted lately. I will be sure to fix that, as BlazeQuest is his future. He should know better than to let other things get in the way of his life.
"I do have some concerns, however," Shuuseki continued. "The NetNavi I programmed for him, Protoman, seems to have become… I'm not quite sure. Vital, perhaps? Yes. Chaud has placed his Navi too high on the list of things he should care about. He acts as if his Navi is more than a piece of well constructed data. I've tried to rid us of Protoman, but Chaud reacted violently to the idea. I was doing it for his own good. That Navi has hurt him! As far as I know, Chaud could have been nearly killed, all because of his Navi."
He sighed. Let his shoulders slump, rubbed his temples. Shuuseki couldn't imagine what his wife would say about that. He knew his feelings on it all, but hers? He just assumed she'd agree with him. But he could be wrong. His wife had never said it outright, but Shuuseki sometimes wondered if his wife had seen NetNavis as more than just pieces of well-built data. It was the small things; it always was the small things. An added, 'please', or a 'thank you'. Maybe an inquiry about their design, or one of those smiles only people she actually liked ever saw.
Maybe she'd disagree with him and tell him that Protoman is Chaud's friend. That their son should care about his Navi and that there is nothing wrong with it; that they'd protect each other. Maybe.
Or maybe, and more likely, the logical part of her brain wasn't functioning properly and so she deluded herself into believing that Navis were anything more than data. Shuuseki hadn't noticed any of the aforementioned behaviors until the very end, after all. And at that point lucidity wasn't something his wife experienced often. Yes, she was simply dying and grasping at straws. She wanted to believe in something, so in her deluded state she believed in Navis.
"How the mighty can fall, yes?"
If some ignorant passerby heard Shuuseki, they might jump to the conclusion that he was mocking his dead wife. They might miss the quiet pain in his voice, the anger, the disbelief. The fear. The fear that the same would happen to him, or—although he would never admit it aloud, only to himself and only in the deepest recesses of his mind even he never dared venture to—his son. A slow, painful death brought about by something supposedly good wasn't something Shuuseki ever wished to experience.
"I should go," he said abruptly. He clamored to his feet, his joints aching and popping in protest. Shuuseki suddenly felt very, very foolish for thinking this as the best way to spend his day. He had things to do. Papers to sign, people to meet, contracts to write up—he had no time to visit his dead wife's grave. It was foolish. Weak. Stupid. He berated himself mentally on the way back to his car. A good suit, ruined. A day, wasted. This little trip of his was entirely unproductive and he still had a day's worth of work to do.
"BlazeQuest," he instructed the chauffeur, slamming the car door shut behind him. He made a note to fire the chauffeur later for not opening the door for him. "And step on it."
"Yes, sir."
As the car pulled away from the graveyard, Shuuseki decided something.
He did not regret this trip.
And somehow, he felt a little lighter.
A/N: Although he barely shows up, I actually like Shuuseki. Kind of. I like to dislike him.
I feel a bit bad for the guy though. He lost his wife, and what if he's just a repeat of his father? Iunno. They don't really show much about him in the series; just that he's definitely not going to win the "Father of the Year" award anytime soon.
Thanks for reading!